Pages

March 12, 2009

Copenhagen Summit Seeks Climate Action

....On Thursday, an e-mail message was distributed to a host of Amazon forest experts and to a journalist by Yadvinder Malhi, an Oxford University biologist who is focused on the Amazon and climate. He questioned the Amazon findings presented at the meeting, and decried the resulting media coverage:

I must say I find it frustrating that the gloomiest take on news gets such a big profile. This is based on one model, and that model has flaws (especially its temperature sensitivity that seems too great (David Galbraith’s work), and its rainfall that seems to low (our PNAS paper PDF). The danger is that that such apparent bad news makes all the efforts to conserve the Amazon forests worthless (why bother saving them if they are already doomed?), and encourages disengagement and hopelessness rather than action. If that conclusion was based on solid empirical science then so be it, but when such a story goes out on a pure model study (not yet peer-reviewed) with significant imperfections, it may do a lot of damage in the real world.

A colleague of Dr. Malhi who attended the meeting responded by saying several scientists there were engaged in “damage control.” When I ran all of this by a couple of social scientists tracking how climate science is conveyed to the public, they groaned (or the e-mail equivalent).....

Oh ! the travails of trying to scare the public into action while maintaining a sense of scientific decorum and honesty. My heart goes out to our intrepid alarmist friends when they have to reconcile such contradictory agendas. Imagine if they just told the truth or said nothing at all until they had proof of their beliefs rather than;

"This is based on one model, and that model has flaws (especially its temperature sensitivity that seems too great (David Galbraith’s work), and its rainfall that seems to low."

Interesting too in this article by ANDy of NYT the opening sentence of his article:

A three-day conference on climate science and policy that drew some 2,500 scientists, economists, campaigners, dignitaries, industry representatives and journalists to Copenhagen has wrapped up,....

journalist ? campaigners? dignitries? OMG industry representatives?! One wonder with such an assortment how many real scientist were actually in attendance? Then of course I am sure there were represenatives from the corporate sponsors. Corporate sponsors? Of a scientific meeting of the minds? Say it ain't so Joe...uh ANDy of NYT.

Certainly no industry that could profit from a convention dedicated to the pure policy of the Climate Change agend...uh science would be permited to participate certainly not like a wind turbine manufacturer. Some might question whether such a sponsorship might place undo influence on .....the science?